Immigration march set for Hollywood on Saturday morning

A protest march in favor of comprehensive immigration reform is scheduled to take place Saturday morning starting at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue.

A protest march in favor of comprehensive immigration reform is scheduled to take place Saturday morning starting at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Cindy Chang

Protesters will take to the streets of Hollywood and other locations across the country Saturday morning to urge lawmakers not to forget about immigration reform.

The Hollywood event begins at 10 a.m. at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, heading south on Western and west on Sunset before concluding at Hollywood and Vine Street.

In Orange County, an immigrant rights rally will take place at the Irvine Spectrum at 10:30 a.m. Events are also planned for San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento and more than 160 cities nationwide.

As Washington remains preoccupied with a federal government shutdown, immigration has faded into the background.

Earlier this week, House Democrats introduced an immigration bill that mostly parallels the one passed by the Senate in June. It would offer a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally, as well as expand visa programs in an effort to eliminate current backlogs.

But many House Republicans do not support a path to citizenship for the 11 million.

“In addition to us facing an economic crisis today with the shutdown, we are also facing a moral crisis, given the deportations, family separations, children without their parents, folks being fired from their jobs,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, communications director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which helped organize the Hollywood march.

Some activists have begun pushing President Obama to take executive action and end deportations, which numbered more than 400,000 in fiscal year 2012.

“Time is running out for a legislative solution, but the president has within his grasp the ability to advance a logical policy that stops the deportations,” said Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org, which will join Saturday's march in Hollywood.

The anti-amnesty group NumbersUSA issued a statement in response to the planned protests.

“Amnesty with work permits is simply not the answer when 20 million unemployed Americans still can't find a full-time job, and when the wages of tens of millions of others are depressed due to Congress quadrupling the level of immigrant workers over the last few decades,” said NumbersUSA President Roy Beck.